Codman intro paragraph

Renowned designer Ogden Codman Jr. (1863-1951) blended two seemingly contradictory approaches in his work: a patrician New England sensibility grounded in his ancestral Lincoln, Massachusetts, home – known today as the Codman Estate – and a taste for aristocratic European excess. Built in 1740 and significantly altered in subsequent centuries, the Codman Estate represented the designer’s lifelong emotional touchstone and aesthetic proving ground. In his later expatriate years, Codman continued to control its decoration from abroad, sending directives to his family from a series of ever more lavish French homes. In 1935, he wrote that the “restraint and simplicity” of Lincoln had “prevented me from…eccentricities that otherwise might have proved too seductive.” In truth, Codman was often seduced – by the trappings of great wealth, the legends of his ancestors’ extravagance, or the well-turned figure of a young man.